Saturday, July 18, 2015
History
Nancy Isenberg, Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (New York: Viking, 2007), p. ix:
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History is not a bedtime story. It is a comprehensive engagement with often obscure documents and books no longer read—books shelved in old archives, and fragile pamphlets contemporaneous with the subject under study—all of which reflect a world view not ours. We cannot make eighteenth-century men and women "familiar" by endowing them and their families with the emotions we prefer to universalize; nor should we try to equate their politics with politics we understand.
